Beautiful Start to Large Glass Wall [Project 6 / 9]

The first much-needed bookcase is up! Originally, I was thinking a regular [& I guess, boring] rectangle shape — but my carpenter wanted something ‘different’ & came up with this corner design.

Each shelf is a triangle [cut at 45° angle] with two side walls of 12″ wide pine board. Until I saw it up in the house, I was unsure of the empty back in the corner, but books hide most of it & it turns out I like seeing some of the wall colour peeking through.

I absolutely love it! I’m amazed at how much bigger the entire place looks. I’m really glad I asked for it to be close to the ceiling. Now your eye is lifted higher than the windows.

Because there’s less shelf space for books [but lots of little niches for ornaments], I made him promise to make me another one for the other corner. I realized I could combine them with our idea for covering the window in the middle.

In Photoshop [Ps], I designed the wall to include:

glass doors on the bookcases, top & bottom;

a piece of stained glass at the top of each bookcase with a solar-powered light [or 2 or 4] behind it;

stained glass ‘colour-blocked’ shutters on the window;

rectangular mirror strips on wall.

The shutters will slide on the wood frame to become wall art when open.

Other colour schemes were considered — I thought gold or yellow would co-ordinate with the pine colour but it becomes the focal point for the eye.

The wall looks quite disjointed with these colours. There is too much going on — the eye has no place to rest.

I also tried red but the only sample I have is way too bright.

Since the entertainment centre doors are blue, I’m going to stick with blue in three different shades for all the glass on this wall. Perhaps the coffee tables or my desk units can be in different colours — but I’ll decide that when I get there.

The bookcase has a very small footprint — it only extends 18″ along each wall. The storage is all in the corner — even more because it extends all the way to the ceiling.

I realized how under-utilized corners are — placing furniture straight in means the other wall is wasted, while placing furniture diagonally leaves a big space behind it wasted.

Up-till-now I’ve been having problems visualizing a workable floor plan for this long, narrow living room. This idea of the corner bookcases has opened up whole areas of space — finally I see a glimmer of possibility.